The administration is working to implement the DATA Act, which, if implemented well, could produce a sea‐change in government transparency, and a shift of power from government insiders to the people.
Yesterday, I submitted to the Treasury Department’s Fiscal Service our 2012 “Grading the Government’s Data Publication Practices” study, along with the following comment, which notes the glaring absence of a machine‐readable government organization chart.
In partial response to the notice, I’m pleased to submit the attached study, which may assist your inquiry.
Over several years, I have been studying transparency, which remains largely undelivered because it has been undefined.
In “Grading the Government’s Data Publication Practices,” you’ll find the results of that study. Transparency is produced by data that comes from an authoritative source, data that is complete, that is machine‐discoverable, and that is machine‐readable. When good data publication conditions obtain, the public and government managers alike, through information services, apps, and websites, will make use of the data to make the government more legible.
The study graded the quality of data publication about key entities in the legislative and budgeting/spending processes. The striking upshot was the absence of good data about a very elemental topic: the organizational units of the federal government. There is no machine‐readable organization chart for the U.S. federal government. The absence of a machine‐readable government organization chart stifles public and congressional oversight, and it frustrates internal management.
Producing machine‐readable data that articulates what the organizational units of the federal government are should be a priority. It is probably one of the easier things to do technically, and it will produce important gains in transparency. Failure to produce and maintain a machine‐readable federal government organization chart would also stand out if it is not done early on in DATA Act implementation.
We are currently in the process of re‐grading data publication in the areas covered by the prior study. In future iterations of the grading study, I look forward to reporting that there is well‐organized, complete information about all agencies, bureaus, programs, and projects, and the relationships among them.
Thank you!
Jim Harper
A cynic—and there might be one or two reading this blog!—would say that the government will never make itself transparent. Well, it certainly won’t if you don’t ask it to…
